Travel Goals

If you can measure it, you can track it.

That’s a positive twist on the Peter Drucker quote, “You can’t manage what you can’t measure.” Drucker was a management consultant and his point rings true, even in travel.  At least for me it does.

While I was in Seoul I came up with this goal:

Travel to one new country for every year I’m alive.  

It’s do-able, manageable, and measurable.  What’s good about this goal is that it includes a figure (one country) and a time frame (each year).  It also syncs up with my personality.

It’s lofty, but paced in a slow, comfortable way.  The loftiness of it gives me something to be inspired by.  The slow nature makes me confident I can actually pull it off.  If I told myself I needed to see 100 countries in the next 5 years I’d never do it because I’d get too stressed out and exhausted trying to pull it off.  But see 100 countries over the course of my life?  I know that’s something I can do.

One country per year means I have a whole year to save money, research, plan, and experience the country.  It takes the pressure off of feeling like I have to be everywhere at once. It gives me plenty of breathing room to make travel happen and have high quality trips.

There are a few potential challenges with this approach, depending on your situation.

1- What if you’ve never traveled before or only traveled a little and are really behind schedule?

You can start from this year going forward.  You don’t have to bum-rush a bunch of places to play arbitrary catch-up if you don’t want to.  This is your goal, after all. You can define it however you want, so long as it remains measurable.

2- What if I’m a bit behind schedule, but I could catch up?  Say, 10 countries behind?

That was my situation when I came up with this idea.  The solution was to take one big trip over several months that gave me time to spend in several different countries.  The specifics of my situation: 4 months, 7 countries. It’s very doable and you can spend a good amount of time in each place, especially if they are small countries.

3- I don’t know how long I’ll live, so how do I account for years when I’m old and not well enough to travel?  

There’s no perfect answer to this question.  I say, take measures now to be sure you’re healthy into your old years.  Some people are pretty much immobile by 60 due to poor lifestyle choices when they were young, while people over 80 who have taken good care of themselves are still on the go.  Do what you can to keep yourself feeling lively and you’ll give yourself more opportunities later in life. You can also do multiple countries some years to bank for your future, old self. 

Whatever you decide, set a goal for yourself and start working towards it!